


Innocence Died Whispering

by ma_r



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Martha Wayne is Joker, Thomas Wayne is Batman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 14:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18812665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ma_r/pseuds/ma_r
Summary: The cops saw many things that day.They didn’t know it yet, but they saw Martha Wayne die and the Joker being born. They saw Thomas Wayne break into pieces that one day were going to be forced together to form Batman. And they saw an eight-year-old boy dead. In a place that was yet to be known as Crime Alley.





	Innocence Died Whispering

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Hozier’s [From Eden](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmWbBUxSNUU)

This is how it stars:

The eyes of the citizens of Gotham City are turned towards the rich sons and daughters of the city as they congregate on the steps of the City’s Museum, waiting for the hour to strike so that the rich can disappear behind the velvet rope that separates them. But, while many of the rich of Gotham are walking into the museum, the Waynes are walking out of a movie theater in a place that is yet to be known as Crime Alley.

* * *

Thomas and Martha Wayne are out with their son, walking briskly to their car. The car is parked at the turn off the street, close to the theater but far enough that the walk is long. Especially in the middle of the night. Especially while wearing some of their fanciest clothes. But they hurry because they are already late to an event they had helped plan.

The Waynes, for all their faults, are not stupid.  So they don’t enter any ill-illuminated alley and they don’t dally as they walk. They make damn sure that that the street lights illuminate their path as they walk hand in hand with their son, Bruce.

And they walk and listen to the boy in the middle of them as he tells them about his favorite parts of the movie they had just watched. About the famous “ _Z_ ” carved on a tree, about the mask and the cape and the black boots.

And they walk until the car is in sight and a man is in front of them, and there is a gun glistering against a pale, blue-veined and shaking hand.

The Waynes aren’t stupid.

So, Martha takes off her pearl necklace, her bracelets, her rings, and her earrings and hands them to the man with the gun. She still looks beautiful, and the anger in her eyes is dangerous.

So, Thomas takes off his watch, his rings, and his cufflinks. He lets the mugger know that he is going to be reaching inside his pocket for his wallet (three credit cards, and $273.49 cash) and hands them over. Trying to look smaller than he really is so that the mugger isn’t treated by him.

So, Bruce takes his cufflinks and the small watch his father had gifted him with and hands them over as well as the five dollar bill he has scrunched up on his pants pockets.

The mugger says thanks in a weird show of manners and his hands are still shaking and he is slowly backing away, and the Waynes are safe, they haven't lost anything worth more than their lives.

But they are still in the middle of the street and someone must have called the cops because there are sirens piercing the air and the red and blue lights are coming closer.

Thomas watches as the mugger startles and accidental fires his gun. He doesn’t see when the bullet hits his son, but he hears the impact and feels the hand on his hand go completely slack as his son drops down to the floor. Dead.

When Thomas turns to look, his medical knowledge assaults his mind. The bullet had an exit wound, and after preliminary visual assessment, Thomas knows it had hit the C3, severing the cervical spine from the thoracic spine, and most importantly, severing the spinal cord from the brain. Putting a stop to all neuroactivity instantly. Dead.

Martha is also looking down at their son, and she drops to her knees and whispers, brokenly: “Bruce?”

 _Bruce_.

Thomas looks at the mugger, the killer, who he is still there, hands shaking harder and something in Thomas snaps.

He is a doctor. He is supposed to help people heal, but at that moment that is the furthest thing from his mind. He is hitting the killer before he reacts, and he is hitting him and again and again and again. Until the man is on the floor, unconscious.  And his hands are red but he doesn’t care and he brushes his hair out of his eyes.

He turns around and thinks _so, this is how my life ends._

Martha is still sitting with their boy, her hands are also red, and they are held against her mouth as she sobs and sobs and sobs. And then a thought struck her, and no one would never know what it was because then Martha was laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing. And she was still laughing when the police finally arrived, so late in fact, that the blood on her hands and mouth had dried, so late in fact, that the blood on Thomas’s eyes and hands had dried. So late in fact, that it makes no sense.

* * *

The cops saw many things that day.

They didn’t know it yet, but they saw Martha Wayne die and the Joker being born. They saw Thomas Wayne break into pieces that one day were going to be forced together to form Batman. And they saw an eight-year-old boy dead. In a place that was yet to be known as Crime Alley.

Bruce Thomas Wayne was buried on the 20th of October on the Wayne’s Manor east garden. In attendance only close family friends: Alfred Pennyworth who didn’t cry. Zatanna Zatara who did. The Kanes and the Foxs and Jim Gordon who has been the cop that arrested the killer. Martha Wayne did not talk during the service and Thomas Wayne did not look anywhere but his hands, were he felt blood still tainted them.

Months passed and Martha still didn’t talk and Thomas still didn’t look.

Eventually, Thomas remembered the cave in which his son had fallen and the bats that had terrorized him and he went to his son grave and promised him that nothing like this would happen to anyone else.

He packed his bags and left, still not looking anywhere but his hands.

Martha Wayne did not talk, she roamed the rooms of her home and didn’t see anything but ghosts and she decided, talking to ghost was better than not talking at all. So she talked to the wall were Bruce had painted a masterpiece in crayon, the chair that had been ruined with spilled blue milk ( _'li_ _ke the one in Star Wars mama!'_ the chair screamed at her.) She talked to the bed that had so recently cradled her son, to the tea set the boy preferred, to the books left bookmarked and unfinished, until her voice was hoarse.

The ghosts in the Manor were so _loud_ they didn’t stop screaming at her. _Screaming_ and _screaming_. The way her boy hadn’t because he had died in less than a second. The biggest love of her life, one of the only joys she had _gone. Gone. Gone_.

Alfred Pennyworth would watch his Mistress staring at empty spaces and she would laugh and laugh and laugh. He took a decision that didn’t correspond him, but Master Wayne had left the Manor in the night, without a word of goodbye or an address to locate him and his wife was lost in her grief. So, he called the Arkham Asylum and he sent the once proud Martha Wayne to receive treatment for her madness. She had gone where she was lead, passive in a way she had never been and was walking by herself when Alfred forged Thomas signature and admitted her on the Asylum.

Thomas found out way too late that his wife was gone.

Thomas throws his will into training, into fighting, into learning everything he can to war against injustice. Martha remains sitting on her room, rocking herself to sleep, singing the ghosts a lullaby until they quiet and let her sleep.

Months and months pass and Gotham forgets about the Waynes and their tragedy. Gotham still hosts Wayne Enterprises, that is being run by a combination of Alfred and Lucius Fox and they are the ones that remember most.

Alfred visits Martha often and he talks to her, lets her know what is going on with the word, tells her that Thomas called once, on Bruce’s birthday and wanted to let Martha know that he was safe.

Martha makes no sign that she is listening as she hums. _Hush little baby, don’t you cry._

A year after Bruce is killed, Martha escapes Arkham Asylum, killing two nurses and the man that had been on guard at the front door. She laughed as she did, and once more her mouth was stained red with her own handprint. No one paid attention to the under-dressed woman that walked barefoot in Gotham that laughed at a joke no one understands.

She breaks into a warehouse that has a sign that reads Ace Chemicals because the ghost says  _look mama, like in the roadrunner and coyote!_ and she tells the ghost,  _no son, look. It's missing the m between the c and e._

Martha Wayne entered the room, walked on a walkway above tubs filled with green liquid. She put one foot over the handrail and then another one. And then the ghost that had been following her for a year disappeared. So Martha jumped. Because she really had nothing left to lose now that the ghost was _gone gone gone._

There was already something damaged inside of her, the pain of the chemical on her skin only finished breaking it.

She came out of the tub and her skin was bleached white, her once dark brown and lush hair was now an ugly orange, her nails had fallen off, and there was now a twitch on her neck, her bloody handprint had been burned into her mouth, disfiguring her.  She laughed through it. This pain, this never-ending ache was nothing compared to the loss of her baby.

She walked towards a clothing store and stole a beautiful white dress, and the blood of the man that had been closing down the store contrasted beautifully against it.

No one would ever look at the Joker and think _this woman once was named Martha Wayne._

No one, except one person who was in the middle of the Himalayas, climbing a mountain with a broken wrist, training under a man named The Demon's Head.

Thomas was a different man from the one that left. He could no longer call himself a doctor, not with all the bones he had broken instead of a set, with all the bruises he had left on the stomach of untrained man. He didn’t know what to call himself, his name, that had been so important in Gotham, had no meaning in Pakistan, Russia or Nigeria. His money couldn’t solve the fights he was constantly getting into and his title of father had been taken as abruptly as it had been given. So for now, he was just called Detective by the Demon’s Head.

He trained for three and a half years and then packed his bags and returned home. The guilt of leaving eating him alive, but knowing that saying would have killed him too.

When he got home, the manor was deserted. Full of dust, spiderwebs, and humidity and as full as it was, it was also empty. There was no Martha to welcome him home, no Alfred with tea, he should have expected it but he didn’t.

He walked inside the tomb that was his once vibrant home and went to visit his son. The tombstone was clean and there were two fresh roses lying against the grave. He took one with him and went to the garage to take on off his cars to town. But once he gets through his own threshold a voice stops him.

There is a short man with a gun raised, dressed in black, his silhouette illuminated by the blue and red of his car lights. And he questions Thomas and takes him to the precinct and Jim Gordon takes one look at him and tells him _we thought you were dead_.  And then Alfred comes and tells him _Martha is gone_. And then the Batman finishes setting. Thomas broken pieces finally coming together into a child's nightmare turned masked hero. _El Zorro_ and the bats merging into one entity, a child’s hero and its worst fear being held together by what was left of Thomas Wayne.

* * *

 

The newspapers, over the years, read:

THE BATMAN DEFEATS THE PENGUIN and then THE BATMAN: GOTHAM’S KNIGHT and THE BATMAN BUST DRUG DEAL and THE JOKER ATTACKS YET AGAIN and  THE JOKER KILLS 743 IN GAS ATTACK and THE BATMAN ARRESTS THE JOKER and THOMAS WAYNE IS BACK and FIVE YEARS SINCE THE DEATH OF BRUCE WAYNE and MARTHA WAYNE: STILL MISSING and WAYNE ENTERPRISES BUYS LEX CORP and LUCIUS FOX APPOINTED CEO OF WE and JOKER ESCAPES ARKHAM ASYLUM YET AGAIN and BATMAN AND JOKER ENGAGED IN BATTLE OF WITS and THE JOKER KILLS 43 and GCPD DENIES ASSOCIATION WITH GOTHAM’S BAT YET AGAIN.

The newspapers never read:

The Joker

 _Real Name_ : Martha Wayne née Kane

 _Sex_ : Female.

 _Blood Type:_ O-

 _Threat Level:_ Five.

 _Number of Kills:_ Unconfirmed.

 _Diagnosis_ : PTSD and DID.

 _Treatment_ : Cognitive Behavior Therapy and benzodiazepines (Valium and Klonopin)

_Prognosis: Bad_

_Appearance_ : Joker is a five foot two woman with bleached white skin and orange hair that rest just above her shoulders. There is a chemical burn in the form of a handprint across her mouth. Her eyes are dark brown and the sclera of her eyes is a pale yellow. She has various scars all along her arms and legs, the scars form different letters. Most frequently is the letter _B,_ followed by the letter _T_ and then the letter _J_. She has no nails and she is missing part of her helix on her left ear.

She is often seen wearing white, a pearl necklace and diamond earrings, she also often holds red flowers. More frequently, roses.

 _Usual Hiding Spots:_ Crime Ally’s movie theater. Warehouse number 19 on Gotham Harbor. Wayne Manor east garden.

 _Known associates:_ None.

 _Personal Comment and/or Observation:_ ~~I just want her to come home.~~

* * *

This is how it ends.

Batman is on what is known as Crime Ally, the movie theater is long gone and he is walking during the day on a street that is no longer illuminated by street lights because this part of the city has fallen into oblivion. He is wearing his usual black and red suit.

And he is walking until a woman is in front of him, and there is a red rose being held against a bleached white and shaking hand.

The Waynes are long gone.

But, Joker comes to stand next to Batman and she leaves the red rose on the floor, she isn’t laughing, she isn’t talking.

But, Batman takes a red rose from his utility belt and leaves the red rose on the floor, he isn’t fighting, he isn’t looking.

Bruce Wayne is long gone and he does nothing.

And they stay there, in the middle of the street and in this part of town no one calls the cops anymore and they remember the boy who was taken from them nine years ago.

Batman watches once more, like every year, and how he will watch for the years to come, as the Joker falls to her knees and in a moment of clarity whispers, brokenly: “Bruce?”  

_Bruce_

And then, it begins again.

The laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is important and encouraged.
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://exolovek.tumblr.com/)


End file.
